John grew up on the edge of Salt Lake City and was second to the youngest of many boys on the block. There was a very tall poplar tree in John’s back yard. It established a challenge and a contest. Who could climb the highest and bite hard into the bark to make his mark. The one boy, younger and lighter, bit the bark quite a bit higher than John and to this day my husband is still wondering out loud how he’d gotten up into those thin wispy branches.
My son, Paul, was also drawn to trees. Our big knobby apple tree’s lowest branches were about eight feet off the ground. Out of the corner of my eye I’d see a flash. It was Paul falling onto a sea of hard ground and bumpy roots all hard as stone. But he’d climb again and fall out a few minutes later. The branches were nice and wide, they even grew gardens of grass and ferns, and why Paul could develop the talent to get up there but not the talent to stay I’ll never know but he was down almost as soon as he got up every time.
So my two favorite men loved trees; one bit the bark and the other used his as a launching pad.
The old apple tree is drawn in my book, “Dragon’s Tale” and in my book, to be finished some time this year, “Superman and The Bad Mermaid Queen”.   nancymauerman.com